QGIS Plugin Development: Using Python Console

As mentioned in previous part of the series, the QGIS Python console is an entry point to GIS workflow automation within QGIS. Remember there’s an iface object representing qgis.gui.QgisInterface instance within the console that gives you access to the whole QGIS GUI. Let’s see what we can do inside the console.

Loading vector layers folder

import glob
from qgis.core import QgsMapLayerRegistry, QgsVectorLayer

def load_folder(folder):
    VALID_EXTENSIONS = ('.geojson', '.gpkg', '.shp')
    files = [f for f in glob.glob("{}/*".format(folder)) if f.endswith(VALID_EXTENSIONS)]

    for f in files:
        layer = QgsVectorLayer(f, f.split('/')[-1], 'ogr')

        if not layer.isValid():
            iface.messageBar().pushCritical("Failed to load:", f)
            continue

        QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance().addMapLayer(layer)

load_folder("path/to/your/vector/files/folder")

QgsMapLayerRegistry represents Layers Panel as present in the QGIS GUI
iface.messageBar() returns the message bar of the main app and lets you notify the user of what’s going on under the hood
QgsVectorLayer represents a vector layer with its underlying vector data sets

Editing active layer attribute table

The following code demonstrates the possibility to edit vector layer attribute table via console.

Any attribute to be written has to come in form of a qgis.core.QgsField - this is more or less an encapsulation of an attribute name and its type (PyQt4.QtCore.QVariant to be precise)
The underlying data provider has to be capable of attribute addition (caps & QgsVectorDataProvider.AddAttributes)
QgsVectorLayer.addAttribute method returns boolean rather than throwing an exception

from qgis.core import QgsField
from qgis.gui import QgsMessageBar
from PyQt4.QtCore import QVariant


def edit_active_layer(attr_name, attr_type):
    layer = iface.activeLayer()
    caps = layer.dataProvider().capabilities()

    if caps &amp; QgsVectorDataProvider.AddAttributes:
        layer.startEditing()
        if layer.addAttribute(QgsField(attr_name, attr_type)):
            iface.messageBar().pushMessage("Attribute {0} was successfully added to the active layer.".format(attr_name), QgsMessageBar.SUCCESS)
            layer.commitChanges()
        else:
            iface.messageBar().pushMessage("Attribute {0} was not added. Does it already exist?".format(attr_name), QgsMessageBar.CRITICAL)
            layer.rollBack()

edit_active_layer("new_string_attribute", QVariant.String)

The whole series aims to present a plugin capable of writing a new attribute and its value to an existing layer. Thus, this code might come handy in the future.

Creating a new vector layer

It’s possible to create a whole new vector layer with QGIS Python console. I present a very simple create_new_layer function, yet I hope you can imagine the ways it can be tweaked.

from qgis.core import QgsField, QgsFields, QgsVectorLayer, QgsFeature, QgsGeometry, QgsPoint
from PyQt4.QtCore import QVariant

def create_new_layer():
    filename = "/path/to/your/vector/file.gpkg"

    fields = QgsFields()
    fields.append(QgsField("attr1", QVariant.String))
    fields.append(QgsField("attr2", QVariant.Int))

    file = QgsVectorFileWriter(
        filename,
        "UTF8",
        fields,
        QGis.WKBPoint,
        QgsCoordinateReferenceSystem(4326),
        "GPKG"
    )

    layer = QgsVectorLayer(filename, filename.split("/")[-1], "ogr")
    QgsMapLayerRegistry.instance().addMapLayer(layer)

    if not layer.dataProvider().capabilities() &amp; QgsVectorDataProvider.AddAttributes:
        pass

    feature = QgsFeature(layer.pendingFields())
    feature.setGeometry(QgsGeometry().fromPoint(QgsPoint(0, 0)))
    feature.setAttribute("attr1", "attr1")
    feature.setAttribute("attr2", 2)

    layer.startEditing()

    if layer.addFeature(feature, True):
        layer.commitChanges()
    else:
        layer.rollBack()
        iface.messageBar().pushMessage("Feature addition failed.", QgsMessageBar.CRITICAL)

create_new_layer()

Those were just few examples of what can be done with QGIS API and Python console. Next time, I’d like to focus on spatial joins inside QGIS - another step to the final plugin.